![[S08-E10] Full Podcast Summary for 07-13-2021](https://server.on2air.com/wp/../uploads/segment_image_1-20.png)
7/13/2021 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S08-E10
Duration: 56 minutes
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FULL EPISODE VIDEO
Watch the full video of the show. See below for segment details.
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In This Episode
Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast, the live show. The BuiltOnAir Podcast is a live weekly show highlighting everything happening in the Airtable world.
Check us out at BuiltOnAir.com. Join our community, join our Slack Channel, and meet your fellow Airtable fans.
Todays Hosts
Alli Alosa – Hi there! I’m Alli 🙂 I’m a fine artist turned “techie” with a passion for organization and automation. I’m also proud to be a Community Leader in the Airtable forum, and a co-host of the BuiltOnAir podcast. My favorite part about being an Airtable consultant and developer is that I get to talk with people from all sorts of industries, and each project is an opportunity to learn how a business works.
Kamille Parks – I am an Airtable Community Forums Leader and the developer behind the custom Airtable app “Scheduler”, one of the winning projects in the Airtable Custom Blocks Contest now widely available on the Marketplace. I focus on building simple scripts, automations, and custom apps for Airtable that streamline data entry and everyday workflows.
Dan Fellars – I am the Founder of Openside, On2Air, and BuiltOnAir. I love automation and software. When not coding the next feature of On2Air, I love spending time with my wife and kids and golfing.
Show Segments
Round The Bases – 00:00:44 –
Following Articles Used in this Segment:
[Airtable Community] One Base fits all? – Ask the community / Base design – Airtable Community Forum
[Airtable Community] June Product Updates – Announcements – Airtable Community Forum
[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | airtable-help | BuiltOnAir
[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | airtable-help | BuiltOnAir
[Reddit] FinTable and AirTable Add On Services : Airtable
Audience Questions – 00:41:39 –
Kamille Parks answers the Airtable question: “How to use an automations after someone submits a form.”
View the question in the community
Field Focus – 00:47:09 –
A deep dive into the Formulas in Lookup Fields Lookup –
Automate Create – 00:51:57 –
Watch as we review and work through automations.
Full Segment Details
Segment: Round The Bases
Start Time: 00:00:44
Roundup of what’s happening in the Airtable communities – Airtable, BuiltOnAir, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Following Articles Used in this Segment:
[Airtable Community] One Base fits all? – Ask the community / Base design – Airtable Community Forum
[Airtable Community] June Product Updates – Announcements – Airtable Community Forum
[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | airtable-help | BuiltOnAir
[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | airtable-help | BuiltOnAir
[Reddit] FinTable and AirTable Add On Services : Airtable
Segment: Audience Questions
Start Time: 00:41:39
Airtable Question – How to use an automations after someone submits a form.
Kamille Parks answers the Airtable question: “How to use an automations after someone submits a form.”
View the question in the community
Segment: Field Focus
Start Time: 00:47:09
Learn about the Formulas in Lookup Fields –
A deep dive into the Formulas in Lookup Fields Lookup –
Segment: Automate Create
Start Time: 00:51:57
Airtable Automations – Automations – At Scheduled Time Triggers
Watch as we review and work through automations.
Full Transcription
The full transcription for the show can be found here:
[00:00:01] Okay, [00:00:02] welcome everyone to the BuiltOnAir podcast. Good to be with you today after [00:00:06] a week off were well rested and ready to go. [00:00:10] Everybody have a good week off [00:00:14] Alli and Kamille with us today, so good. Good to be with you, [00:00:17] I'm dan, [00:00:18] and we'll be hosting your show for today as always. A BuiltOnAir podcast is [00:00:24] a live show where we go through and talk about everything happening in the world [00:00:29] of Airtable and bring you the latest news and insights and tips on how to [00:00:35] improve your Airtable environment and and working with their table. [00:00:39] So [00:00:40] we're good to be with you today and let's get started as always, [00:00:44] we start our show with around the basis segment where we'll go through the [00:00:48] different Airtable communities and see what's going on and learn about the [00:00:54] latest discussions of everything in the Airtable. So [00:00:58] I thought we'd start off, we had an end of month since last time we discussed [00:01:03] and with that usually comes a list of new features from Airtable. [00:01:10] So going through the, what's new section with june updates, um any big ones that [00:01:19] you guys like that they released in june [00:01:24] well um [00:01:28] there were a couple of things, there were some changes to uh the scheduled [00:01:34] automation feature um that I thought were good the [00:01:38] before I think you can only do it every minute or every hour and now you can do [00:01:42] it every minute hour or weak. [00:01:44] Um [00:01:46] I'm actually gonna, I'm going to show that in the automate creates so we'll dive [00:01:50] into that. [00:01:53] Um and there was like the google drive [00:01:57] I think um [00:02:00] it's a beta but yeah, that was this month as well. [00:02:03] Yeah, [00:02:05] yeah, and that will be for for pro users, so that's good. [00:02:10] Um Salesforce, it looks like it's open, but it's still enterprise. [00:02:15] Maybe someday they'll give Salesforce to the rest of us. [00:02:19] Yeah, [00:02:21] but for now it's still enterprise. Um [00:02:25] the ad record button, If you notice that now there's a permanent add record [00:02:31] button, [00:02:33] see it's not on sink tables [00:02:36] there. It is. So that plus button down there is now always there. [00:02:41] So that's after some good pushback from the community, I believe [00:02:47] you're familiar with that, that dialogue, so that was good to see you added. [00:02:53] Mhm. [00:02:54] Uh This section is now collapsible. The create view section. [00:02:59] So if you go that creative, you this right here, you can now hide that. [00:03:05] That was like always there, taken up prime real estate when you may not need [00:03:10] that. So that's a big [00:03:12] it's a big space saver. [00:03:15] Yeah, [00:03:16] there's the one I found this morning that's not on that list. [00:03:20] That is um you can now add views to your favorites [00:03:24] which is [00:03:26] super cool. [00:03:28] Yeah, let me let me show that. [00:03:31] So talk through that. [00:03:34] Yeah, if you can while you're mousing over the view that you're on, [00:03:37] you can it will show you that little star and you can add it [00:03:41] um by just clicking right there or that one was already added so that that will [00:03:45] remove it but then you can also just click on the little drop down on the right [00:03:48] hand side and add it to your favorites. [00:03:51] And I'm, you know, I'm 99% sure that that's user specific, I have not verified [00:03:56] that, but it would be kind of silly if it wasn't. [00:04:01] Yeah. So cool feature. Now they have add favorites. So you saw it here first, [00:04:07] I don't believe they've announced this feature yet [00:04:11] and it's only on Pro, it's only on pro basis, which makes sense since it's kind [00:04:17] of creating um sections which is also only available on Pro. [00:04:22] Yeah, [00:04:24] so that's a cool favorite section. That will come in handy [00:04:30] definitely. [00:04:31] Um this other one that I've seen, other people kind of running into this on [00:04:36] running a script. There's it now gives you warning of memory limit of six MB. [00:04:44] Um Somebody in our slack community has already run into that and I don't know if [00:04:49] that was always there and now they just they say they just make it [00:04:53] a more specific air message, so maybe before [00:04:58] it was giving an air message of timing out or something and now there's a [00:05:02] specific air message that you're [00:05:05] using up too much memory so I haven't run into that yet but I imagine I will um [00:05:14] especially if you're loading in a lot of records. Uh That seems like a small [00:05:19] limits, I'm kind of disappointed to see that. [00:05:24] So we'll see if that becomes an issue. [00:05:29] Um copy automation U. R. L. [00:05:33] Um So you can go directly to an automation. I don't know how many people were [00:05:39] asking for that but I could maybe be useful. I think it's more to help their [00:05:45] support team I think. Yeah [00:05:48] because if something is going wrong with an automation and just getting to the [00:05:52] thing that's causing the error. [00:05:54] Um [00:05:56] Yeah I don't from a user standpoint I don't think it's uh [00:06:00] going to come up super often that we're going to need the link. [00:06:04] Yeah [00:06:06] interesting. This one's interesting. This is more I think kind of a bug fix [00:06:12] where if you're using the find records task within an automation I guess they [00:06:17] were coming in in a different order than the view. Um And so now you can specify [00:06:25] the view [00:06:27] that you're fine. Well you could always specify the view but now it will, [00:06:30] the ordering will stay the same. So that is useful [00:06:35] and it looks like some mobile updates. So um improvements on the mobile apps [00:06:42] which is always good [00:06:44] um [00:06:47] interesting. So now you can add a flashlight on the barcode scanner to help scan [00:06:53] your barcode. So that's cool. [00:06:57] All right. So those are those are the updates for uh for the month of june plus [00:07:02] some new ones that are just out today. So [00:07:06] check those out play with those features. Let us know what you think of anything [00:07:10] that they added in june. Love to hear it. So let's move on. I picked a couple [00:07:15] articles or a couple of posts on people um talking about different um issues [00:07:22] that they're facing that I thought would be good to to discuss [00:07:26] Kamille. Here's one that looks like you answered. Helped answer. [00:07:30] Um So it's about [00:07:32] um getting using the substitute formula [00:07:38] and how that works. [00:07:42] Yeah they had a text field that was coming in from the data, [00:07:46] they were importing and things were separated with a semicolon instead of a [00:07:50] comma. And they were trying to convert that into a multi select field. [00:07:54] If you do it right away it'll just make one really long single option because it [00:07:58] needs to be separated by a comma. And so it was just [00:08:01] a matter using a formula field to substitute all the semi colons with commas [00:08:07] and then converting the formula fields into the multi select field and then [00:08:11] either deleting or hiding the original field. [00:08:14] The [00:08:16] uh last couple of comments in this thread is just they're a little bit confused [00:08:21] about trying to convert the original fields from the get go. [00:08:25] You can't you have to add a new field first make that the formula, [00:08:29] do the substitute, then convert it. [00:08:32] Um and then that's it promises. [00:08:36] I think I think one thing that that I caught my attention was how they were [00:08:40] getting a circular reference and I thought that might be good to talk about. [00:08:44] Do you want to explain circular references? So they had the original column that [00:08:49] had those semi colons in it. And they were [00:08:52] uh converting that into a formula and saying replace everything in the field [00:08:59] semi colon uh with a comma. But that's a circular reference because the formula [00:09:05] field cannot reference itself. Um You would have a endlessly recursive formula [00:09:10] and so that's you know [00:09:13] going to eat up all of their tables computing power if you will. [00:09:17] So you can't have a formula field reference itself and you can't have formulas [00:09:23] that both rely on each other. You can have a formula calculate one thing and [00:09:29] another formula coming after that and calculate based on that. [00:09:32] But you can't have a calculate B. And B calculate a. That just makes sense. [00:09:37] Um So [00:09:40] that was how they ended up getting a circular reference here. [00:09:43] And so we just clarified that no you actually need a separate field. [00:09:47] Um [00:09:48] uh for the formula. So it can look at the original without referencing itself. [00:09:53] Yeah very good. Yeah you'll see this sometimes you could have field you know [00:09:59] formulas referencing formulas, referencing formulas. And then you want to [00:10:03] reference the original formula and you're like three deep and not realizing that [00:10:09] you created a circular reference. So [00:10:11] luckily they give you a warning there. [00:10:14] I find that that can happen really often when you're using a formula field for [00:10:18] your primary key like for the I. D. Field of each record. Like even when you're [00:10:24] like three tables away it can still give you that reference and then you gotta [00:10:28] back up and be like wait [00:10:31] but yeah yeah yeah I can see that. Yeah for sure. So you gotta be careful there. [00:10:37] All right next one. [00:10:41] So general um this was a question on kind of strategy if your workflows of [00:10:48] having one base where you kind of keep everything and then and then um be able [00:10:54] to use that base as kind of your primary source. [00:10:58] All three of us remember days prior to table sinking features being at a tear [00:11:04] table [00:11:05] where you had to come up with some work around to try to get your data from one [00:11:09] base to another. That has become easier now with their table sink but as Justin [00:11:15] points out you do need to be careful of um [00:11:19] Are actually database. ER points out 20 sink tables into one base is the limit. [00:11:25] So you need to be careful if that becomes an issue of having lots of bases going [00:11:31] into one or one base going into um [00:11:36] Now so it's 20 into one but one can go to more than 20 is that correct correct? [00:11:46] You can have one table sink into as many different bases as you want one table [00:11:52] can only accept three sources [00:11:55] so you can only combine three tables into one [00:11:59] table. [00:12:00] I think they afford that. Yesterday. Oh they did literally yesterday I tried for [00:12:05] the very first time I tried to sink multiple sources into one table and I got 23 [00:12:11] and I was like well that's all we can do. And then it was like new at another [00:12:14] source. Like literally just yesterday I saw this. Cool. But [00:12:19] and that was also the first time I ever tried it and it was [00:12:21] really cool. It was way more flexible than I ever thought it would be. [00:12:24] Do we know what the new limit is? Not yet? Well I'm going to assume five. [00:12:31] Probably a good guy. [00:12:33] Yeah anybody out there knows with the new limit or wants to play with that. [00:12:37] We could we could maybe try that for a future one. That's good to know. [00:12:40] Yeah. So they must uh [00:12:43] Be increasing those limits which is always a good thing [00:12:48] to do. So would that towards that 20 tables, [00:12:52] would that what would a multiple source table just count as one or would it [00:12:57] kinda think? Okay I think it counts as one table. [00:13:02] I would hope so. I mean it does say 20 tables. Yeah they're not 26 sources. [00:13:08] So that would be cool. I I also this is kind of a side note sidebar. [00:13:13] I noticed the other day that you can now import to an existing table. [00:13:19] A C. S. V. File [00:13:21] without the app. Yeah. [00:13:23] Um Yeah [00:13:26] so that's pretty cool. [00:13:28] So that's through your existing table. [00:13:34] Oh [00:13:36] that's exciting, [00:13:38] wow that the app. [00:13:40] But it does bring the app up [00:13:43] the shortcut to the app. Well that's silly. [00:13:47] All right [00:13:48] but that's better than [00:13:50] that's helpful. Yeah it's helpful to I guess consolidate all the import options. [00:13:56] I do wonder how many of the apps over time are going to be moved into the [00:14:01] uh regular Airtable ui because it's not like they don't gate pro features, [00:14:08] like thinks that that same section. View sections are a pro feature and you just [00:14:14] can't add a section if you're not pro. So I'm wondering if there [00:14:18] going to take the C. S. V. Import app and put it into the regular Ui without it [00:14:24] opening up the app bar [00:14:26] like a Gant moving into its own view type. [00:14:32] Right? Yeah. Hopefully [00:14:35] I would open up some doors. Yeah. [00:14:39] Very good. Okay one more from the Airtable actually there's one more after this [00:14:45] but this one I thought was interesting. Somebody asked is there a way to track [00:14:51] all of your sMS text messages? So they're already using the SMS app in Airtable [00:14:59] um with Twilio, [00:15:01] but as they point out there isn't a way it doesn't keep track of all the text [00:15:06] messages that you send. So they're saying man it would be nice to track all of [00:15:10] those in an Airtable table. Um So you can see a history of all your text [00:15:15] messages. Well sure enough, our friend scott links to our episode [00:15:20] where he does exactly that. [00:15:22] So I thought that was pretty cool that we were helping solve a very specific use [00:15:28] case that somebody needed. [00:15:29] So if you also need that, check out our previous episode, it looks like it was [00:15:33] episode six [00:15:35] um where scott came on and and showed a pretty impressive um [00:15:41] uh mini app that he built that is all SmS based and can track all your text [00:15:46] messages back and forth with people in your history and everything. [00:15:50] So very cool [00:15:52] to see that. Okay, final question. Um [00:15:56] I thought this one was cool. We've also talked about the web clipper and in a [00:16:03] previous episode we showed that app very powerful app [00:16:08] and this person is trying to within linkedin, extract this one specific number [00:16:16] and Kamille, why don't you share how you helped them solve this? [00:16:20] Well, they were kind enough to include screenshots of the developer console, [00:16:26] um [00:16:29] which will show the html structure of every page. And so uh right there in the [00:16:34] screen shot you can see that it has a series of different classes associated [00:16:39] with it in classes in CSS just apply different styling rules. [00:16:44] So [00:16:45] um I just used, you know, context clues to figure out which one of those classes [00:16:51] was the most important, You could include all of them if you wanted. [00:16:54] I just pick the one that seemed to make the most sense and it was called like S. [00:16:58] S. I underscore underscore score. Um [00:17:02] And that's the value that they were trying to extract. So what you would do is [00:17:05] in the web clipper app you would in CSS notation, which is dot if it's a class [00:17:12] and then the name of the class, if you're looking at the I. D. [00:17:15] Of an html element, it would be hashtag or pound sign [00:17:21] and then the name [00:17:23] um there's a couple of different uh [00:17:27] things you have to follow if you're trying to include more than one class or [00:17:30] more than one html element or anything else like that. But it all follows [00:17:35] regular CSS styling rules. So if it's the same element that has two classes [00:17:41] applied, you would concatenate the two names of the class together with no space. [00:17:46] If it's a nested element, like inside of [00:17:50] a diff there's an H. One, you would include the class of the H. [00:17:54] One of the dev space and then the class of the H. One inside of it. [00:17:59] That's regular CSS and if you need a little bit of coaching on how to do that [00:18:05] Airtable as a support article for that. And CSS is like [00:18:08] one of the most common languages [00:18:10] on the planet, so you can look up literally anywhere and they'll tell you how to [00:18:14] do it. [00:18:14] Yeah. [00:18:15] Yeah. And sometimes it gets tricky because there's more than one value that it [00:18:20] could that it could pull from. So you might need to get more specific, [00:18:24] but it looks like [00:18:26] this one was pretty straightforward. So one of the powerful I really like um [00:18:31] that feature within within the web clipper definitely comes in handy for [00:18:36] pulling data out of the out of websites and pushing in the Airtable. [00:18:42] Mhm. [00:18:43] So with that let's move on to our own, BuiltOnAir slack community. [00:18:47] So we have a pretty active community of people helping each other, [00:18:51] talking about other stuff that they're working on finding help. [00:18:55] So join us BuiltOnAir.com/join and you can join in on on the [00:19:00] discussion. So [00:19:02] this one I thought was interesting somebody looking for an unsubscribe feature [00:19:08] where maybe you're almost building like a crm out of Airtable and you need to [00:19:14] legally you need to have if you're if you're marketing and sending emails to [00:19:18] people a way for people to [00:19:20] unsubscribe for um future [00:19:23] um email notifications. And so I think you know any major system mail chimp or [00:19:29] whatever is going to have that functionality. So if you're trying to build that [00:19:33] functionality within Airtable, Airtables emails don't have that feature [00:19:40] um because you're kind of in control of your users and so if you're sending [00:19:45] emails one you shouldn't be spent sending a ton of marketing related email but [00:19:50] if this is too kind of a smaller known universe of people that you're sending to, [00:19:56] you might need to add a link. [00:19:58] Um Any any thoughts on how you could potentially do that with with their table. [00:20:05] It's not pretty, Yeah. [00:20:09] One of the problems is a lot of times people will say I want to [00:20:13] send an email to everyone who is currently, [00:20:17] you know [00:20:19] subscribing to this product, but they don't have a separate table or list of [00:20:25] like mailing lists like a traditional marketing uh team would have. [00:20:29] And so it's easy to unsubscribe somebody from a mailing list. [00:20:33] If you have like this person said they want [00:20:36] a bunch of emails now. They said that they don't versus someone who is just a [00:20:40] customer that I have. You know, it's it if you don't have that kind of setup, [00:20:47] it's kind of hard to [00:20:49] engineer unsubscribe feature because what are they unsubscribing to everything [00:20:54] or just that one type of email that you just sent [00:20:58] crack? [00:21:00] I would hurt. [00:21:02] I mean I think you could definitely do it natively but I [00:21:05] like Kamille said it's definitely not going to be pretty like you'd probably [00:21:09] have to use just an Airtable for him and then like for somebody to pick an [00:21:12] unsubscribed like from just one option in the single select and then submit. [00:21:17] But if it were me, I'd probably I've been getting into the habit of doing um [00:21:21] like auto submitted many extension forms that just redirect you to another many [00:21:26] extensions like public share link [00:21:29] for a record. So it's kind of like a form that edits the existing record and [00:21:33] then land you want a landing page showing you. Okay. Yeah you did it [00:21:37] um [00:21:38] But it is a little slow. Yeah. [00:21:41] Yeah on a similar vein I was thinking could you send them to a automation web [00:21:48] hook you RL but those have to be do those have to be a post? [00:21:55] I haven't been able to get at work to work by just clicking on it an Airtable [00:21:59] web hook [00:22:01] on their table. I think those have to be a post but I'm not [00:22:04] 100% sure. [00:22:06] Um So this is kind of technical but if you just click on a link that's called a [00:22:11] get request uh and you can't actually perform a post [00:22:17] directly through like the browser [00:22:19] you know you are l address [00:22:22] so that may not work. Um The other challenges if you're doing this with email [00:22:28] you have to be careful even like the approach you talked about because [00:22:32] email systems when they're looking for spam some will actually click through [00:22:37] links within the email to verify that where they're taking you is a valid you [00:22:43] know website that's that's legit. And so if it's just purely a click without [00:22:48] having to do anything, the email system may actually click on that link for you [00:22:54] and auto unsubscribe you. If there's no landing page that asks you to confirm. [00:23:00] That is really interesting. Yeah so that's something to be careful of. [00:23:05] And so that's where probably yeah having a form that they have to [00:23:10] check a box and then submit would be the way to go. [00:23:15] Oh definitely, [00:23:16] that's super interesting, [00:23:18] yeah, so [00:23:20] run into that before. Okay, next one [00:23:24] question of [00:23:27] so I figured Kamille, this might be up your alley calendar, you're the calendar [00:23:32] lady, I don't know how that happened, but sure, okay, scheduling hundreds of [00:23:38] people to different time slots. Sounds like a fun job. [00:23:44] Is it doable in their table? What would you, what would you say? [00:23:48] Uh you need an app probably or uh [00:23:53] fairly robust script. Not really. Um So your chance to plug, [00:24:00] well, what I've, what I've done allows you to say, um if jim has all of these [00:24:08] events that he's already signed up for, you can sign jim up for another event [00:24:13] that doesn't overlap, [00:24:14] but if you're trying to say I need to schedule jim and nancy at the same time, [00:24:20] it doesn't really [00:24:22] help unless you want them combined into one record. [00:24:26] Um I think what this person might be asking for, there is a script [00:24:33] in um I want to say the marketplace or it's somewhere on the community forums, [00:24:38] it's called shift shift schedule er [00:24:42] um I think um [00:24:45] and I think it lets you select what times, generally people are available and [00:24:51] then filling in those times with people, [00:24:55] um I haven't used it, I'm not entirely sure if that's what they were [00:25:00] requesting or if that's what they need, but it sounds like you probably could [00:25:04] use that script as a starting point. [00:25:07] Um [00:25:08] but I seen their question you're asking [00:25:11] for stacker or softer and he answered there, I'm going to say almost definitely [00:25:16] is no. Um, [00:25:19] you're better off using like calendar early and then using a P. [00:25:23] I. Or Integra matt to sink things together. Um software and stack are great for [00:25:28] displaying data. But uh stacker more so than softer is good at editing data. [00:25:35] But when you're trying to do something as complex as, [00:25:38] don't let me schedule for any time that's already taken or show me in relation [00:25:43] to everyone else and then let me schedule at that point it was cowardly or some [00:25:48] other similar service. [00:25:50] And this problem [00:25:52] even a lot of the standard scheduling platforms don't solve this one. [00:25:58] This one is more of a, [00:26:00] a human resource type platform where your scheduling [00:26:06] jobs and workers. So [00:26:10] in that case you're probably, you might have to get a little bit more custom. [00:26:14] Yeah. [00:26:16] Yeah. And the other tricky part is because I've thought about this as well, [00:26:20] like I've I haven't been super satisfied with scheduling software but [00:26:26] getting it to sync with your google calendar or outlook or whatever you're using [00:26:31] for for your calendar now, you can, if you're using google, you can sink those [00:26:36] calendar events back into Airtable, which would, which would help in some of it. [00:26:41] But the actual scheduling to make sure that there isn't conflicts at that time, [00:26:46] that part's tricky. [00:26:49] Yeah, I'm I'm seeing in my mind's eye and ab someone could make of if you have a [00:26:58] table of people and then a column that's like linked to their google calendar, [00:27:05] like their public google calendar ural if they have that, so they could show [00:27:10] when events take place. [00:27:12] It is possible using the system that I use for both scheduled and Master [00:27:17] calendar, the most recent version of full calendar, which is open source allows [00:27:24] you to import events from google calendar [00:27:28] to be displayed, which means the data model, I'm starting to get technical but [00:27:33] the data model allows you to reference both events pulled from Airtable if [00:27:37] you're building a custom app [00:27:39] um and events being pulled from google calendar and then using its internal [00:27:45] logic to not let you overlap there. The reason why Master calendar and schedule [00:27:50] er don't make use of that is because it requires web pack which is not [00:27:55] compatible with Airtables. Current custom app [00:27:58] uh [00:27:59] environment. So I'd love to include it as a feature as soon as it's available, [00:28:03] I will but I am handicapped if you will um in order to that you have to develop [00:28:09] the platform separate from Airtable if you want to go the route that I just [00:28:13] described. [00:28:14] Yeah, [00:28:16] very good. So yeah, so that this one is a little bit trickier that that would [00:28:20] require some some custom implementation, definitely not not out of the box but [00:28:26] um [00:28:27] yeah, that that might be a tough one to solve with their table. [00:28:31] Okay, here's what I brought up, so I read it, we're moving to read its community [00:28:38] and um this one is from our friend chris dancy, [00:28:42] I actually got another one from him coming up but this one he talks about, [00:28:47] he used a third party system and this isn't, I didn't want to bring this up to [00:28:52] to bash on on the third party, but he definitely talks about the bigger concern [00:28:57] that he brings up in. This is be careful with your data and who you're giving [00:29:03] access to your data. This one is a financial um system [00:29:09] that actually accesses your your bank account and then brings the data in Terror [00:29:14] Table and he's decided to to not use it and kind of talks through his reasonings [00:29:19] for not, but I think from us, you know, not so much specific to that product, [00:29:24] but just in general, I think that is good advice. There are [00:29:29] lots of apps coming into the marketplace [00:29:31] and not always make known who the creator is. I saw somebody in our community [00:29:39] asking about trying to get ahold of one of the creators of one of the apps that [00:29:44] don't really make themselves publicly known. [00:29:47] So if you're if you have anything sensitive in your Airtable data, [00:29:53] just be aware of who you're giving your api keys to and giving access to that [00:29:59] um obviously I'm biased of being an app creator and doing that, [00:30:03] we take our security as serious as possible of who has access to any data. [00:30:09] We try to not store um data on our servers when it when it's not needed. [00:30:15] And [00:30:16] so just just definitely something to be aware of with with your data who you're [00:30:21] giving it access to. [00:30:24] Yeah [00:30:25] my my my goal is to never need anyone's api key for anything. [00:30:30] Uh we'll see how far that'll take me because there's only so much you can do [00:30:34] with pure Airtable, [00:30:37] you know, permissions uh from just what you're given as you know within the box [00:30:45] of a custom map. But so far, you know when I make an app it's I do not care [00:30:53] about your data and it stays exactly where it should be. The only thing that [00:30:56] happens [00:30:57] outside is you're either logging in to unlock the features or if you don't want [00:31:01] to unlock the features and literally see nothing [00:31:04] like nothing [00:31:05] but yeah it's important to to guard your api key especially for platforms like [00:31:12] Airtable where you only have one api key um Other platforms that you create [00:31:18] multiple different api keys and give them out to different services. [00:31:22] Airtable gives you one api key for your whole account. So [00:31:26] just something to be a, [00:31:28] you know, Cognizant enough [00:31:30] happening. [00:31:33] Yeah and similarly share links also falls into that if you're wearing your view [00:31:38] or your base um you know if you don't lock it down with a password or something [00:31:44] that's technically anybody who came across that that link could could get access [00:31:49] to your data. So [00:31:51] you know, good and bad of of making your data accessible. So just be aware of [00:31:58] the trade offs there. [00:32:01] Yeah. [00:32:02] All right. Continuing with chris um I just love every time he shares his his [00:32:07] base is just how much effort he puts into making them visually appealing. [00:32:14] So he talks on twitter about some of the stuff that he's working on. [00:32:20] So he's got some very visually appealing bases if you've seen any of his work. [00:32:26] Um [00:32:28] and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but a little birdie told me that [00:32:32] there might be a new conference coming down soon. So [00:32:36] chris's last one that stay tuned for that. [00:32:41] Cool. [00:32:42] And and he talks about, yeah, here's his thread where he shares a bunch of his [00:32:48] bases and what he's got going on. So it looks like he could use master calendar. [00:32:55] I don't know, I haven't tested um It's I don't put a limit on the number of [00:33:02] tables that you can pull in or a number of feeds rather you could pull into [00:33:05] master calendar. There's no hard limit in there. I have not tested bases as [00:33:10] complex as uh good old Christianity's because he has [00:33:15] he's famous for very, very complex and very well designed but very complex [00:33:19] spaces. So [00:33:21] you know, I wonder could it even handle all of the feet. So I imagine you want [00:33:25] to pull in. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So anytime you see christian his stuff, [00:33:30] it's worth checking out. [00:33:32] All right, next one this one I thought was interesting. Um The question was they [00:33:39] have they use a select dropdown and they have all of their list. [00:33:44] You can see there is a very long list that they've got. You could scroll down a [00:33:47] long way so they probably have [00:33:49] 100 or so different options [00:33:52] and they want to be able to extract this list in some way [00:33:56] and [00:33:58] there is a way [00:33:59] but it would require either it would require essentially um um using the block [00:34:08] the app environment to extract those that list. Right. [00:34:14] Yeah. [00:34:16] Yeah. I think you could probably only do it with the scripting up. [00:34:19] Yeah I think [00:34:23] yes I was thinking in my head of what [00:34:27] metadata is available in both scripting and custom apps and then scripting in [00:34:31] both Actually it's pretty easy but much faster and scripting if you go table dot [00:34:36] field or table dot get field and then get the field for the single select [00:34:42] there's options dot choices [00:34:46] and then you map the choices by just the name because I don't think this person [00:34:50] probably doesn't need the id or the color association for each of those choices. [00:34:55] But then that will give you a comma separated list of all of them. [00:34:58] It's a little annoying that that's the really only way to do it. [00:35:01] There's not like a [00:35:03] copy all or some kind of button within the configure field options. [00:35:08] But yeah, it's certainly possible again [00:35:11] until september you need a pro [00:35:14] after september you'll need a pro account to use the scripting up. [00:35:17] So at some point this won't work for [00:35:19] everyone in the scripting up, expose those. [00:35:23] Yes, it does. Yes. [00:35:26] I have a script that I wrote to like turn them all into button choices. [00:35:31] It was like for like uh I mean it could work for multi select too. [00:35:35] But [00:35:36] yeah, it's kind of cool. Yeah, that could be another. Yeah. Somebody should put [00:35:41] a script up there to just generate a table of all those options. [00:35:45] Then you could easily copy and paste them. [00:35:48] Absolutely. That would be a pretty simple script to write. Uh [00:35:52] Maybe we'll do that for scripting [00:35:55] actually. Well, we can do that next week for a scripting [00:35:58] time. All right. It's different. [00:36:01] Okay chris Messina. Check us out next episode will have your answer. [00:36:07] Yeah. [00:36:07] Alright. Last one. Then we'll move on. Just a quick reminder. [00:36:11] This person um use their affiliate link or their their special invite link that [00:36:18] everybody has. If you go into your account and they just wrote one blog post. [00:36:22] Put the link at the bottom with their special one [00:36:25] And they've already earned $470 in credits [00:36:29] by sending people there table who then signed up. And so good reminder that that [00:36:36] you can get free credits that help pay your bills for your pro account and if [00:36:42] you have a large audience use that and get people signed up for every table. [00:36:46] It brings more into the community and you benefit from it as well. [00:36:50] So I thought that was a good reminder and uh, [00:36:53] yep, [00:36:54] If I'm not mistaken for one person monthly for a whole year, [00:37:00] it's $240, this person has roughly two years worth of Airtable for free for [00:37:07] like [00:37:08] 11 blog post. So, [00:37:11] so very cool. [00:37:13] Good job dream. [00:37:16] All right, let's move on. We're now going to take a minute and hear from me, [00:37:21] the developer of onto air, which is an old one toolkit to run your business on [00:37:26] tears. The primary sponsor of the BuiltOnAir community. So with that I'm going [00:37:32] to share [00:37:33] uh something that that is in our Amplify product [00:37:38] and we'll get kind of behind the scenes, you'll see how we run this podcast and [00:37:44] what we're working on to improve our marketing efforts. And, [00:37:47] and basically we use amplify two as well as we use um on terror actions to run [00:37:56] um the creation of creating blog post, creating our Youtube videos, [00:38:01] um that that we're working on. [00:38:03] And one of the features I wanted to showcase is um this, this component here. [00:38:09] This widget is a Jason editor. Jason is essentially a technical language away to [00:38:15] format data that's very widely used very easy to use a little bit more technical [00:38:21] but [00:38:21] how we use this feature is [00:38:24] um you know Airtable you think of everything is is defined in a column. [00:38:30] Well sometimes you want data that's a bit more dynamic and you don't want to [00:38:35] have to create fields for every dynamic element or attribute that might be [00:38:40] associated with a record, [00:38:43] a good use case for that is where you can use Jason. So Jason is a way to inside [00:38:48] of one long text field, you can put text in there that has more attributes. [00:38:56] And so what we do is for every different type of segment that we run within our [00:39:01] built on our podcast [00:39:02] we have predefined [00:39:05] elements are variables or attributes associated with each um type of segment. [00:39:12] So instead of having to create columns or fields for each of these three. [00:39:18] So these three are unique to the specific um this entire spotlight add that [00:39:25] we're talking about here [00:39:26] and so instead of having to create all of these fields, some that are only used [00:39:31] for one segment, others that are used for another segment. We instead have just [00:39:36] one long text field and inside that long text field we enter these attributes. [00:39:41] And so with adjacent field it makes it easy [00:39:44] to define these. I could add another one easily all through this UI [00:39:49] and then what happens is this is where our static segments are are defined [00:39:56] and then when we have an actual live show we automatically create a copy of this [00:40:03] data and then it goes into another view. So I'm gonna switch over [00:40:09] to our live show segments um [00:40:13] and go over to this layout and then now we use a copy of that data and this UI [00:40:20] has this option called form. And what that means is you can't actually modify [00:40:25] what's already defined in there. So it's almost like a mini form within a field. [00:40:31] And so now for this segment [00:40:35] we just have to fill in the value for this predefined variable that that we [00:40:40] define just once when we create the different segment types. [00:40:44] And so now I just have to enter in like who was the podcast host for this. [00:40:49] And then we quickly go through each of the different segments and fill in [00:40:54] the different variables. Using this form feature. [00:40:57] So super powerful. Here's one that has three and we just fill in these and then [00:41:02] these all get used in the creation of blog posts are youtube posts and [00:41:07] everything like that. So it makes it very simple to enter just the information [00:41:11] that is specific to you. [00:41:13] So that's one of the features of the onto air amplify product and then using [00:41:19] Jason as a way to break down a long text field into into sub elements and then [00:41:27] in particular using this this form layout within the Jason editor to not allow [00:41:32] you to modify the key values and then only update the values on the right. [00:41:39] So with that we're now going to move on to our next segment [00:41:44] audience question [00:41:46] and Kamille is going to take it. [00:41:49] There you go, Kamille. [00:41:51] All right. Is that people see my screen? [00:41:54] Yes. Okay. So, um I saw this question on the community forums yesterday and I [00:42:01] thought it was a pretty good question to answer um essentially what they're [00:42:06] asking for is if it's possible to use an automation um that uh [00:42:13] you know, changes the status of a record after somebody submits a form and [00:42:19] answer is yes, it's true. But I realized you [00:42:22] probably don't need an automation for this in the first place. [00:42:25] So they have a series of products and people can either rent or buy the product. [00:42:33] And what they wanted was after somebody submits a form that says that they've [00:42:37] taken the product, they want the status of that individual product to say [00:42:42] occupied or no longer available or something like that. And again, [00:42:46] you absolutely could use an automation for this. But I would recommend just [00:42:51] using roll ups or formulas. So [00:42:54] to demonstrate, I just made a very, very simple base that has a list of assets [00:43:00] or products. Very, very simple. Not much going on in it and then a log table [00:43:06] um with a form attached. So you would select an asset from [00:43:12] the form, you would say, who is being uh who is it going to and then the date um [00:43:19] that somebody picked it. [00:43:21] Um and then you would click submit. And what happens then is [00:43:26] um [00:43:28] let's see, [00:43:30] I have a roll up field that says whether or not something is available. [00:43:35] Um Rather let me go to all assets because all of those are available there. [00:43:40] Um I have a rollup field that's whether or not something is available versus [00:43:44] whether or not something is occupied. And what that is doing is it's trying to [00:43:50] see out of all of the records from the table that had the four minute, [00:43:55] how many of them have the date returned field that are empty. [00:44:00] Um [00:44:00] If [00:44:02] any one of those linked records doesn't have the date returned field entered. [00:44:08] That means one of those records is still out, meaning that thing is occupied. [00:44:13] So there's a little bit of logic to it. Um and that's applied within this role [00:44:17] of um field. [00:44:19] Uh It's using a trick that I use all the time, which is to combine a formula [00:44:23] with the roll up, it's not advertised, but we've talked about it before that [00:44:28] within the body of a roll up uh [00:44:31] Roll up field, you can use regular formula functions. So I'm using an if [00:44:35] statement in addition to the regular um roll up aggregation formula of count all [00:44:42] um combining those together to get if any of them are still out, [00:44:46] then it's occupied. If all of them are in, then it's available. [00:44:50] Um And [00:44:51] the benefit of using a form in this case is that you can limit people's [00:44:57] selection to the assets table to only things that are coming from a particular [00:45:02] view and I have a view already set up that's filtered for only the ones um that [00:45:07] are available. So again [00:45:10] if I go back to that [00:45:12] uh view I was on you'll see, I do have a filter and just only showing where the [00:45:18] status is available, [00:45:22] no automation. Um uh And I took a few guesses as to what this person's final uh [00:45:32] solution might look like if it's something that you know uh something isn't ever [00:45:39] returned, it's just out and it's gone then you don't need either of these two [00:45:43] fields. What you would just do is um have this rollup field um only count if um [00:45:52] mhm. [00:45:53] If the log field rather or the link to the asset field is like empty, [00:45:59] so [00:46:01] if it has any links at all then it's occupied um [00:46:05] but again it's flexible um depending on what the actual final use case is. [00:46:14] Yeah, [00:46:15] that's very useful. Great use of [00:46:18] not only the roll ups but also the the ability to to use that list within the [00:46:25] form which is a relatively new edition, the Airtable made it very cool, [00:46:32] very useful and if [00:46:34] you're okay, we love to share this space with the community. [00:46:37] So yeah, this is a copy of a base that I test [00:46:43] um a lot of different apps with. Um it is so, so very simple and I think it's a [00:46:48] copy of a copy of the asset manager, asset something or other base from your [00:46:56] table stanford calories. So yeah, this is [00:46:59] open to being shared. [00:47:01] All right, thank you Kamille with your answer to that. Hopefully that helps our [00:47:06] community answer that specific question. [00:47:09] Now we're gonna move on to field focus with Alli [00:47:14] Sure, your screen [00:47:16] go for it. [00:47:18] Awesome. Alright, so this is really, really simple, nothing like too crazy or [00:47:23] fancy going on here. Um I've been seeing a lot of people asking questions and [00:47:28] I've asked this question myself [00:47:30] of many times super confused like trying to find, trying to perform some sort of [00:47:35] formula function on a look up field. [00:47:39] Um [00:47:40] and I've since done kind of changed everything to go with exactly what Kamille [00:47:45] just explains, like kind of combining a formula and look up into just the one [00:47:49] roll up. [00:47:50] But there's also lots of situations where you might just want to have a look up [00:47:53] field [00:47:54] um and in this example I have this look up field that's just looking at the [00:48:00] tasks table [00:48:01] and just pulling over if any of the tasks are overdue onto the resources table. [00:48:08] So we can quickly see like this person is to overdue tasks. [00:48:12] Um but say we wanted to just instead of showing this whole big long string, [00:48:17] say I wanted to just show a warning, like a visual flag. If the word overdue is [00:48:22] found in this [00:48:24] uh [00:48:24] look up field. [00:48:26] And so the way that you would typically right that is you know, [00:48:30] you could write if find overdue [00:48:33] in this field then output this warning. [00:48:37] But as you can see there's nothing here, even though we've got the words overdue [00:48:42] more than once in a couple of these records. [00:48:46] And the reason for that is because this look up field intrinsically Airtable [00:48:50] has it as an array, it is not a string. [00:48:54] So you need to force Airtable to see this as just one big long string rather [00:49:00] than separate values. [00:49:02] And there's two ways to do this. [00:49:04] One way that I'm partial to just because I like wrapping things and functions is [00:49:10] you could use the array join function here and just wrap this look up field in [00:49:16] that value. [00:49:18] And once I hit save, you can see now it's actually working. Another option would [00:49:23] be to instead of the array joint. And I think that this is like a W van hall [00:49:29] staple. [00:49:30] Um If we just add an ampersand into quotes. So just adding a blank. [00:49:37] Not even not even a character just adding, I don't even know what to call it [00:49:42] extreme. I've just written. Perfect. Yes. Um to the end of that field that will [00:49:47] also force Airtable to view this as a string rather than an array. [00:49:53] So that will do the job as well. [00:49:56] Um And another way [00:49:59] to do that by just using one field would be to change that into a roll up. [00:50:05] I'll point it the same way [00:50:08] look up field is [00:50:10] and I would write if [00:50:13] fine [00:50:15] over to. [00:50:16] And I mean this this is kind of [00:50:19] Uh huh. [00:50:20] Maybe superfluous. Just because there's not gonna be a warning here. [00:50:24] We could just say if the values exist then there's an overdue. [00:50:27] Just because the only reason we'd have something there is if something is [00:50:30] overdue. But I'm getting overcomplicated neither here nor there. [00:50:35] We could write if fine overdue [00:50:38] in the values that are returned [00:50:41] then [00:50:42] we want [00:50:44] have that visual flag [00:50:48] and that will do the same thing. So I don't even have to have these two fields. [00:50:53] I could just accomplish the same thing with just one roll up [00:50:59] that's about it. [00:51:02] Mhm. [00:51:03] Alright. Many ways to improve your efficiency working with roll ups and and [00:51:09] those those um [00:51:12] fields there. So thank you Alli for that. [00:51:17] Let's move on a quick plug for our community. If you're listening to this and [00:51:20] you're not a member of our built BuiltOnAir community, you need to join. [00:51:25] Now go to BuiltOnAir.com/join [00:51:28] and you'll get a weekly newsletter of everything that we're talking about here [00:51:34] as well as other things that are happening in the community [00:51:37] and you there's also a slack community that you should be a part of. [00:51:41] We want you in there and helping each other out. So it's a great place to get [00:51:46] access to other like minded Airtable fans and learn from them. [00:51:51] And also we want to learn from you. So join us at BuiltOnAir.com [00:51:57] for a final segment. We're gonna look at the automation process in this automate, [00:52:02] create segment [00:52:04] and we're going to go to um we're just going to look at some of the new features [00:52:10] that they've added, one of the new triggers um In addition to being able to [00:52:15] change now, your trigger type, which is really cool. Is this at scheduled time [00:52:21] and they've made some recent enhancements to this. So what this trigger does is [00:52:27] it allows you to set up a schedule where this automation will run every time [00:52:34] that this schedule. Um the requirements are met and so it's not triggered off of [00:52:40] anything within your data, it's purely based off of the calendar time and date. [00:52:45] So use cases for this would be if you wanted to send out a daily email at the [00:52:51] end of the workday, that that would be a summary of everything inside of a view. [00:52:57] That is a common use case for this. [00:52:59] Um If you know how to script and you're comfortable doing script. [00:53:04] Um This is useful for things that maybe you don't want. You don't need uh [00:53:10] something to run every time, a record is updated. [00:53:14] Um but you want to process all of the things that have updated within the last [00:53:19] hour within the last day. You can set up this trigger and then perform a script [00:53:25] that can do bulk operations of everything that is inside of a view. [00:53:31] Um Instead of doing everything on a per record basis [00:53:35] so that actually saves some of your automation execution runs um as well as it [00:53:41] might just make more sense to update hourly instead of in real time when when [00:53:48] things updates. So those are kind of some of the use cases for using this at [00:53:52] scheduled time. So once you once you pick that trigger type then you will select [00:53:57] how often you want this to run and you can either do minutes hours or weeks [00:54:03] and if you do once you select one of those then it gives you some more options. [00:54:09] So you essentially for hours you would pick every x number of hours that you [00:54:14] wanted to run. So if you want this to run every fifth out of every five hours [00:54:18] you do that. And then now this new feature that they added is you can actually [00:54:23] set starting times of when in the future you want this [00:54:27] um to run, so maybe you want it you don't want to run right now you wanted to [00:54:31] run [00:54:32] um starting in a week or starting at something. Now this is not driven [00:54:39] dynamically, so there isn't a way to like pull a date from your Airtable data [00:54:44] or anything, it is kind of hard coded [00:54:46] Um which is one of the limitations there but that that is useful if you pick um [00:54:53] minutes, it's pretty much the same. The most recent interval that you can have [00:55:00] is every 15 minutes, so you can't run anything [00:55:04] Um in a more in a smaller timeframe than every 15 minutes. So something to [00:55:09] consider [00:55:10] if you pick weeks, there's a little bit more functionality so you can you can [00:55:14] say every two weeks and you can pick pick specific days and so maybe you want to [00:55:19] monday Wednesday friday every other week, uh [00:55:23] the specific time and then you can set it to start on a specific date. [00:55:28] So a lot of variable configuration that that you can do to to run your [00:55:33] automation and think about ways that things that you just want on a weekly or [00:55:39] daily basis or hourly basis. [00:55:42] That would make sense to send out an email process, multiple records, [00:55:47] anything like that. The scheduled time is very useful for [00:55:52] for setting up [00:55:55] automation is on that front. So [00:55:58] with that that's the end of our automate create any final last minute words. [00:56:07] I want to give a shout out to Hannah Wigington uh commented, [00:56:13] I didn't get a chance to see that when when um you comment to that but we [00:56:17] appreciate your feedback and your your input. I will try to get that on next [00:56:23] time and next week our show for next week. Well actually, [00:56:27] hopefully have a special guest with us, somebody a creator [00:56:31] that has built their business entirely on their table and is willing to open up [00:56:36] and show how they run a multimillion dollar business entirely on on Airtable. [00:56:44] So that will be exciting. And she a good to have you with us. [00:56:48] Welcome. [00:56:50] Always good to have people watching us live. So join us next week. [00:56:54] Until then, good luck with your Airtables and we always love to see what you [00:56:59] build on their talk to you next time.
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